by Mim E. Rivas
In his stables at 75 Maiden Lane, Albert Rogers concluded the interview for the morning. He had covered the Doc’s extraordinary war stories as well as his extraordinary creation of a life after the Civil War. These notes also detailed the extraordinary manner in which Jim Key had honed his performing talents in the medicine-show business and had then learned to recognize the letters of the human alphabet.
Oddly, the more Rogers learned about man and horse, the more mystified he was by them. He remained incredulous that Bill Key had spent seven years creating a daily classroom for Jim, even when they were out traveling, just to be sure his smart horse didn’t miss out on his education, as the trainer slowly and deliberately taught his equine student to recognize all his letters and his printed numbers from 1 to 30. Only someone as stubborn as Dr. William Key could have had such patience.
The Doc shrugged. Maybe. But once he had finished teaching the basics, he said, “From that time on my work was comparatively easy.” Soon Jim Key could demonstrate an ability to add and subtract, and in reading he showed that he could successfully select words and names that the Doc printed on cardboard. Dr. Key then started him on spelling (using a system of phonics), along with lessons in multiplication, division, writing, and the Bible.
Rogers observed the small, well-worn Bible that William Key kept close at hand. Was Jim receiving religious instruction? The Doc explained, “We’re studying the places and quotations where the horse is mentioned in the Bible, for horses were mighty prominent animals then.” On a scrap of brown paper he had transcribed in pencil a question-and-answer session with his horse:
Jim, how many times do words boy and girl appear in the Bible?
Answer: One time.
Where?
Answer: Job, 3rd chapter, 3rd verse.
In contrast, so far they had counted fifty-four biblical passages with allusions to horses. Doc Key related that he was going to teach Jim to cite chapter and verse upon hearing the quotations spoken aloud.
Albert Rogers, still not ready to shake his amazement, left the dutiful scholar and his kindly professor to carry on. Their stories had given him much to write in his pamphlet and much to think about. As he contemplated how a former slave and a once crippled colt had come so far, it occurred to him now that the survival of the fittest was strangely less relevant than the survival of the smartest.
5
Higher Calling
The educated horse, Jim Key, will be privately exhibited at Field’s stables, 156 E. Twenty-fifth Street, New York, to-day, by R.R. [sic] Rogers. The horse reads, writes and spells, tells various pieces of money without error and makes change.
—THE BROOKLYN EAGLE, “SPORTING NEWS,”
Wednesday, August 18, 1897
DURING THE REMAINING DAYS before Jim’s debut in New York, Albert Rogers worked feverishly to complete his pamphlet that trumpeted “He Was Taught by Kindness,” while also hustling about town to talk up the exhibition of the uncanny horse such as none of his circle had ever seen before.
But interest was lackluster. Sophisticated Manhattanites tended to view entertainment involving exotic or circus animals as lowbrow; the curiosity market for more mainstream New Yorkers had been overly saturated by the recent spate of World’s Fair animal extravaganzas and in earlier decades when P. T. Barnum had kept his American Museum in lower Manhattan chock-full of dangerous and unusual creatures. The press was cagey, wary of promoting another hoax, for which newspapers like William Randolph Hearst’s Journal were being criticized in this nascent era of yellow journalism.
Rogers was dismayed to hear from the officers of the ASPCA that they wouldn’t be attending the showing. He was just as stymied by the leadership of the American Institute Fair, which was set to open in a month for the fall season at Madison Square Garden. If only he could entice those individuals to come and see Jim with their own eyes, he was sure that the Institute Fair planners would be thrilled to book Jim and Dr. Key for the two-month event and that the ASPCA would kneel at his feet for the opportunity to sponsor the perfect candidate for an organizational mascot. So why weren’t they interested?
Rogers seemed to be unaware of the long-standing distrust between the humane movement and promoters of live animal acts, dating back at least as early as 1867, when a scathing exchange of letters between P. T. Barnum and Henry Bergh was published by the New York World. As the founder and president of the humane society, Bergh was famous for using the press to bring attention to animal mistreatment—such as the merciless beatings of streetcar horses committed by unsupervised teamsters—and then pursuing remedies in the law. But when he took on P. T. Barnum to complain about the American Museum’s feeding live rabbits to its boa constrictor as cruelty being masked as public entertainment, the effort backfired.
Ridiculous, claimed Barnum, calling Bergh the laughingstock of every naturalist in Christendom. Everyone knew that reptiles naturally ate their food alive. Barnum denied Bergh’s suggestion that if a boa was hungry enough he would eat a cooked rabbit and enclosed a letter to that point from renowned Harvard professor Louis Agassiz. Not immune to controversy, his work in the classification of species having been used to uphold slavery, Agassiz boldly took Barnum’s view: “I do not know of any way to induce snakes to eat their food otherwise than in their natural state: that is alive.” From the same authority who used the code word philanthropists when referring to abolitionists came a further jab at the elitist sensibilities of the ASPCA: “I do not think the most active member of the society would object to eating lobster salad because the lobster was boiled alive, or refuse roasted oysters because they were cooked alive, or raw oysters because they must be swallowed alive.”
Henry Bergh roared back at Barnum and Agassiz, suggesting that they were in favor of animal cruelty. But it was P. T. Barnum who had the last word after a campaign of character assassination against Bergh whose behavior, he charged, betrayed “low breeding and a surplus of self-conceit.” Though Barnum won in the short run, Bergh was vindicated a year later when fire shut down the American Museum, killing dozens of the exotic animals and reviving public criticism of the wealthiest “professional liar on earth.” Three years later when Barnum took his new show on the road—a menagerie with barking Alaskan sea lions and Italian goats performing stunts atop rare Arabian purebreds all the while bounding over spears thrown by genuine Fijian cannibals—once again, voices of concern about animal and human exploitation were drowned out by the roar of the entertained crowd.
The sparring between Barnum and Bergh began a lasting wave of protests from many quarters against the circus maestro’s mistreatment of animals; but it also firmly embedded the notion in popular consciousness that upper-class do-gooders like Bergh tended to be unreasonable to the point of absurdity. Though neither of these influential men remained alive in 1897, it was still the case, as Rogers ought to have known, that humane organizations were historically suspicious of any animal show or promotion.
Rogers decided on another angle. If the humane people weren’t ready to see the wonder that had been accomplished by kindness and education, he would go the show business route and first establish a name for Jim Key with the public. This brought him to answer the universally thrilling question of just how the star was first discovered. To tell that story properly, Rogers realized he had to include some background on himself. After all, he needed a ready answer in the event that exhibitors received his press materials and wanted to know—just who is this Albert R. Rogers?
The Rogers family of Cincinnati, Ohio, were blue bloods every which way. Albert’s grandfather, Hiram Rogers, descendant of the Connecticut founding family of the Rogers lineage, had made his fortune in the railroad industry, and with his wife, Cordelia—from an old Kentucky family—had planted their dynasty in southern Ohio. In Cincinnati, their enterprising son Hiram Draper Rogers rose to higher stature by expanding the family business to include the manufacture and wholesale of railroad supplies, and by marrying Rhode Islander Mercy Adelia Reynolds, a di
rect descendant of Samuel Gorton—a founding father of Rhode Island as well as a founding champion of American religious freedom, with his followers known as the Gortonites.
The Rogers men clearly had a propensity for marrying strong, influential women, evidenced by the male tradition of listing property in their wives’ names, and by the way the women shaped the Rogers family values. Mercy Rogers was the prime example, a woman who had inherited an independent, rebellious streak and a love for animals that she passed on to her firstborn son, Albert Reynolds Rogers, who was born on March 28, 1864.
The eldest of five children, Albert was undoubtedly expected to one day take over the family business, and by the age of sixteen he was already working full-time as chief clerk at the main store in Cincinnati. But early on it was clear that the prospect of spending the rest of his days in the manufacturing and wholesale of railroad supplies would kill him. His interests were elsewhere, somewhere in the realm of providing entertainment to the masses.
Rogers was a young man of many contradictions. He was practical and idealistic, flexible yet stubborn. He could be outgoing and shy, diplomatic and willful, sensitive and aloof, verbose and terse. In the same way that Jim Key had not been able to become one of his herd, and that Dr. Key never quite belonged to one group or another, Rogers found himself feeling more at home when he was away from home, lost in the company of strangers. His favorite place to be was when he found sanctuary in the dark under the big tent or at the opera house, waiting for the show to begin. He loved mingling with the carnival crowds at fairs, riding the rides, exploring the attractions, listening to barkers compete for his attention.
Soon he became sure his destiny lay in that direction, but when he tried his hand at promoting a few fair rides, nothing quite hit. Yet despite his failure, he learned the ropes, allowing him to use his naturally likeable personality to make contacts in several new arenas. Rogers found that marketing in show business wasn’t so different from marketing in the railroad supply business. What he really needed was a great product—a star attraction—to market.
In the mid-1880s, Albert’s family relocated to New York, where Hiram had established Rogers Manifold and Carbon Paper Company several years earlier. As was the fashion for those who could afford it, Hiram and Mercy purchased both the 75 Maiden Lane townhome—with close proximity to the company’s offices on Wall Street—and “Glenmere,” a majestic country estate in the exclusive Montrose Park section of South Orange, New Jersey. Albert became the chief officer of the company, with Hiram taking the subordinate position of treasurer.
A. R. Rogers much preferred the daily workings of the carbon paper and printing business to that of the railroad supply business. His vision was to apply what he learned from circus barkers to the principles of marketing copying paper and typewriters.
In the patent medicine world, the pitchmen were originally distinguished as either high or low, depending on whether they hawked their wares from a high platform (back of a wagon or stage) or whether they set up on the street, displaying their goods on “low” three-legged stands. Similarly the amusement front talkers used verbal come-ons that could be termed as being hard sell or soft sell. Borrowing from high and low, hard and soft, Rogers sought ways to translate this range of seductions onto the printed page, playing with different fonts and colors in his materials, which boasted visually interesting letterheads and logos, artfully worded promotional language and product endorsements.
A late bloomer at twenty-four, Rogers seemed to have found his calling and took this, in 1888, as the right time to marry Miss Clara Bloss of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, a daughter of upstanding New York parentage. The newlyweds gladly took up residence in the Maiden Lane townhome—which remained for some time in Mercy’s name until it was deeded to Clara—and the couple went on to have three sons, Clarence, Newell, and Archibald.
In his press materials, Rogers described himself as a “New York industrialist.” But as his family could attest, he was still in the process of finding himself. His greater interest was definitely in the amusement field, something that in the last few years was beginning to pan out with some modest investments in a couple of rides and attractions. He also had developed new ambitions to become a philanthropist. His wife and his mother may have suggested that he direct his energies toward the humane movement. In Clara’s social sphere, a new topic of interest, especially in women’s reading circles, was the sharing of touching and illustrative animal stories that advocated protection of God’s most unprotected creatures from cruelty and neglect. For her part, Mercy believed that while it was often the values and ideas of women that ultimately changed social consciousness, men were nonetheless needed for leadership roles in organizations.
Duly inspired, Albert sought and was eventually given an introduction to Ida Sheehan, a New York society pillar and humane society grande dame. On May 23, 1896, he wrote her a heartfelt note, describing his desire to help raise funds and awareness for her important cause, and received her reply four days later in which she thanked him for his kindly interest. Ida Sheehan wrote:
I am a great lover of all animals, and, do what I can for their protection, in an effort to lighten the burden of the noble, much abused servant of mankind—the poor horse. I came to the conclusion that if the horses of the city were ever to receive better treatment, a kindly feeling of appreciation of their faithfulness and worth must be instilled in the hearts of the drivers by some substantial suggestions; hence my idea of presenting annually a gold medal to the most humane driver coming under my personal observations.
The “Ida” medal, she went on to say, had thus been instituted. With an invitation to call her on that Monday next, she concluded:
I am always happy to greet those whose heart goes out to God’s helpless, speechless creatures—the poor suffering animals. Wishing you every success and blessing in your noble work, believe me.
The meeting proved to be cordial and illuminating. Albert was apparently surprised to learn how disconnected the many humane organizations were from one another. Moreover, he now saw that despite the charity of certain wealthy contributors, most groups were either underfunded or mismanaged their funds, and as a result were ineffective in their work. There was another problem, he felt, which was the humane groups’ stigma of elitism. He believed that if he could only help the ASPCA and fellow organizations find a way to connect to the masses, then their toughest challenges—money and image—would be overcome.
Rogers had a brainstorm to create a linkage between his promotional enterprises and his charitable aspirations. Once his amusements investments began to pay off, he was certain to accomplish that goal. Finally it looked as if two of his attractions had that potential. One was a ride called Shoot the Chutes. The other was the Old Plantation, an increasingly popular exhibit that simulated antebellum life and traveled complete with movable cotton fields, full-scale Colonial plantation homes, and authentic slave cabins.
Infectiously enthusiastic as he could be, Rogers convinced other investors that the steep costs of transporting, installing, and running these attractions would be negligible when compared with the profits to be made in the plethora of local, state, national, and international fairs. When income didn’t quickly exceed expenses, he assured others and himself that the next big fair would definitely allow profits to materialize. That’s what he claimed when the next big fair was being held in Nashville, Tennessee.
After booking his concessions there at the last minute, Albert felt very strongly that his fortune in the promotional arena was going to turn on the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition. He had no idea how dramatically it would.
The circumstances that led Dr. Key to feature Jim Key in his professional debut at the Tennessee Centennial were much different. But Bill was likewise influenced by a woman, his wife, Lucinda Davis Key, M.D.
In 1894, Lucinda had received her medical degree from Howard University and returned for good to Tennessee to establish her medical practice, as intended,
in Chattanooga. From the moment she opened her doors, Dr. Lucinda Key was kept overwhelmingly busy ministering to Negro patients who came seeking her services from miles away in every direction. Dr. William Key worried about his wife becoming ill from exhaustion or exposure to contagious diseases. Whenever he could he traveled with her to Chattanooga, bringing Jim along with them, of course, whether by carriage or locomotive.
During these trips, he told Rogers, “Jim and I gave free exhibitions in the street and after the exhibitions I would sell my liniment to the crowd.”
Toward the end of a demonstration one afternoon, Jim surprised him with a piece of improvisation right at the moment when Doc Key typically prepared to introduce his medicines with his speech about “good for man or beast.” Just then a man in the crowd called out, “How much you want for the horse?”
